The ADA protects, as confidential, employee medical information obtained by an employer.
Last year, I asked the following questions about the impact of social media on this confidentiality obligation:
What happens, however, when an employee suffers an on-the-job injury and a supervisor shares information...

One of my summer television addictions is NY Med , which follows surgeons around some of the New York metro area’s busiest hospitals. One this summer’s episodes focused on a man who had been hit by a subway train. An ER nurse Instagrammed a photo of the empty trauma room, along with the caption...

Can an employer's social media policy be unconstitutional? Maybe - if it's a public employer. We may get some insight into the constitutional boundaries of public employer social media policies in a new lawsuit filed against a sheriff's office in Texas. The case is Pittman v. Garcia. You...

In Triple Play Sports Bar & Grille [pdf] , the NLRB unanimously concluded that an employer unlawfully fired two employees for their off-duty Facebooking, and less-than unanimously concluded that the same employer’s social media policy was unlawfully restrictive [an enhanced version of this...

The title of this post is a bit laughable, isn’t it? I mean, really, it’s almost an oxymoron. Keeping secrets on social media? What’s the point? The very existence of social media is dependent upon sharing—not secret-keeping. But the two are intersecting more and more. Which is...

Employees telling secrets online was the subject of yesterday's post, Keeping Secrets on Social Media . Today's post--a continuation of the theme from yesterday--is about "auto-expire" apps.
An "auto-expire" app is an app that enables users to set an automatic expiration...

More proof that both entry-level employees and C-Suite executives can do dumb stuff and receive the Vince McMahon treatment ...
No shirt, no sense, no job.
When I go out to eat, I'm not that picky. While I often have a taste of fine dining, I can do beer and wings with the best of 'em....

The PBA Ethics Committee issued a formal opinion on Ethical Obligations for Attorneys Using Social Media (HT: Dan Siegel on Legal Intelligencer ). The opinion is jam-packed with 18 pages of social media goodness on 10 main issues. Spoiler Alert! The committee concludes that:
1. Attorneys may advise...

Maybe you've heard about it. I'm giving a little spiel today on social media in the workplace with a few friends at an event in Philadelphia. If I play my cards right, I'll do as little speaking as possible on the dais.
Which means I'll get my two cents in and discuss on a hockey coach...

The intersection of Facebook use and Free Speech is complicated. Complicated enough, in fact, that the U.S. Supreme Court will weigh in on the subject when it decides a case it is scheduled to hear argument in today, Elonis v. United States [lexis.com subscribers may access Supreme Court briefs for this...

Earlier this week, I wrote about the issue of threats made via Facebook constitute constitutionally protected speech. Today’s post also is about threats made via Facebook but in the context of the workplace. The case, decided by the Court of Appeals of Ohio, is timed perfectly for my road trip...

A party’s “right to privacy” in the context of social media is the subject for numerous motions in civil litigation. The scenario goes like this: Plaintiff sues defendant, alleging injuries. Defendants seeks discovery of Plaintiff’s social-media content, such as photos, posts...

Wait, seriously?
Yep. No employee of the State of South Carolina will be allowed to use social media on the job, "unless specifically required by the agency to perform a job function."
Cassie Cope at TheState.com first reported this news here . According to the State Employee Code of...

Have you downloaded Meerkat or Periscope to your iPhone? Do you even know what Meerkat and Periscope are? They are new apps that permit you to live-stream video. They essentially work the same way—when you launch a live-stream, the app tweets out a link for your followers to watch your video. The...

It’s not news that employer social media policies are on the NLRB’s radar. What is newsworthy, though, is when the NLRB considers a social media policy and concludes that it does not unlawfully infringe on employees’ rights to engage in protected concerted activity under the National...

At our Annual Employment Law Seminar last week, I spoke about the “Facebook Privacy” bill that was then pending in Delaware’s House of Representatives. The bill passed the House on later that day and is now headed to the Senate. For those of you who weren’t in attendance last...

Forcing job applicants to disclose social media logins and passwords as a condition of employment is so 2013 kinda like this crappy blog . So, the State of Oregon is this close to becoming the first state to expand its social media workplace privacy law to forbid employers from requiring their employees...

To conclude this week’s posts, I wanted to list some of the more prevalent social media tools, explain what they are and how you might use them in a compliance program. (As usual I got carried away so this series will conclude on Monday of next week.) You need to remember that your compliance customer...

I conclude this exploration of the uses of social media in doing compliance by exploring why the compliance function is uniquely suited to using social media tools. Long gone are the days when Chief Compliance Officers (CCO) or compliance practitioners were lawyers housed in the Legal Department or the...

One of the finest employment-law bloggers, Daniel Schwartz, recently marked the eight-year anniversary of his Connecticut Employment Law Blog with a post about the three most notable changes in employment law over that span . Number one was social media.
While for us bloggers, social media presents...

A number of months ago, Paul Hamilton, KYC Cube Ltd, asked me if I wanted to be the group moderator on Linkedin of a new subgroup for his AML Knowledge Center, dedicated to anti-bribery compliance and best-practices. My reaction, ‘really?’ Another LinkedIn group? But after a few discussions...

An employee who was allegedly fired for violating a company’s social media policy is going to have his day in court. And on this blog.
Chris Redford, a white male, worked for a Louisiana TV news station. The station has a social media policy prohibiting employees from responding to viewer complaints...

Last year, at about this time, I blogged here about a case involving some employees who thought that their employer had underpaid them. So, they discussed the matter at work. And then continued their conversation on Facebook, where they used language that wouldn’t quite make an Eagles fan in the...

“What could you arrest them for?” asked the Scottish tweeter who just made $97 total manipulating two stocks. “@dunragit are you serious? Did you read my post? It’s called securities fraud.” It would be difficult to find the people since they did not use their real name...